That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with the Lithuanians became evident during the Conference.  General Pilsudski, on his own initiative, visited Vilna and issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians announcing that elections would be held, and asking them to make known their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw government.  One of the many curious documents of the Conference is an official missive signed by the General Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first Polish delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come to terms with the Lithuanian government, as behooves two neighboring states.  Unluckily for the soundness of that counsel there was no recognized Lithuanian state or Lithuanian government to come to terms with.

As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and utterances of the two world-menders were so infelicitous as to lend color to the belief—­shared by the representatives of a number of humiliated nations—­that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported to be a policy of pure humanitarianism.  Some of the delegates were currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive capitalistic influences.  Possibly they would have been astonished were they told this:  Great Britain was suspected of working for complete control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from the markets of that territory and to have potent levers for action in Poland, Germany, and Russia.  The achievement of that end would mean command of the Baltic, which had theretofore been a German lake.[189] It would also entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland, and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians from Germany’s orbit into that of Great Britain.  In vain the friends of the delegates declared that economic interests were not the mainspring of their deliberate action and that nothing was further from their intention than to angle for a mandate for those countries.  The conviction was deep-rooted in the minds of many that each of the Great Powers was playing for its own hand.  That there was some apparent foundation for this assumption cannot, as we saw, be gainsaid.  Widely and unfavorably commented was the circumstance that in the heat of those discussions at the Conference a man of confidence of the Allies put this significant and impolitic question to one of the plenipotentiaries:  “How would you take it if England were to receive a mandate for Lithuania?”

“The Great Powers,” observed the most outspoken of the delegates of the lesser states, “are bandits, but as their operations are on a large scale they are entitled to another and more courteous name.  Their gaze is fascinated by markets, concessions, monopolies.  They are now making preparations for a great haul.  At this politicians cannot affect to be scandalized.  For it has never been otherwise since men came together in ordered communities.  But what is irritating and repellent is the perfume